Dearborn opioid overdoses dropped 60% over two years

Dearborn fights to curb opioid use disorder

Dearborn was one of the first communities in the state to add Narcan vending machines like this one at the Dingell Transit Center on Michigan Avenue, and they credit that type of early action for a major decline in overdoses for the second year in a row.

DEARBORN, Mich. (FOX 2) - A downriver city says they’ve seen a massive drop in overdoses, and they’re crediting an innovative approach many communities are taking to save lives.

Big picture view:

Dearborn officials say they’ve seen a 60% drop in overdoses over the last two years.

Dearborn was one of the first communities in the state to add Narcan vending machines like this one at the Dingell Transit Center on Michigan Avenue, and they credit that type of early action for a major decline in overdoses for the second year in a row.

The City has new data showing a 36% reduction in total overdoses in 2025 compared to the same timeframe in 2024.

Dearborn officials say overdose deaths have also dipped 38% year over year.

How do they do it?:

We talked with Dearborn’s public health director, who said it’s all in the way they brought city and community groups together to change the narrative of addiction and recovery.

"Narcan is a opioid reversal medication," said Ali Abazeed. "If someone is experiencing an overdose, you administer Narcan and the overdose is reversed. And so it’s one thing to have access to it, and a lot of people have had access to it prior to 2022, but we paired the intervention with narrative — how do we get the community to know that substance-use disorder it’s not an individual failure? It’s something that we’ve all got to look at collectively and that’s exactly what we did in Dearborn."

The City’s public health approach to opioid addiction began in 2022 when they launched a key office focused on this issue.